In praise of Vladimir Bukovsky

Vladimir Bukovsky is the incredibly brave Soviet dissident who spent 12 years in prison and political psychiatric hospitals before his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1976. His memoir — To Build a Castle — one of the great documents of the era (and now out of print).

We’ve been friends for a long time, ever since he came to America to study at Stanford, which he left after the university president bestowed an award on a phony group of Soviet physicians who had been actively involved in Bukovsky’s torture.

Interested readers may want to check out Claire Berlinski’s City Journal essay “A hidden history of evil,” which draws on Bukovsky’s work.